Setting Up a Sideblog on WordPress

So the other day, I got it into my head that I’d like to start keeping a development log and perhaps journal. I have a LiveJournal and a dreamwidth account, but both of those sites are dead. Additionally, LJ’s interface is total shit and while I like dreamwidth’s ye olde interface, their theming options are way more complex than they need to be. I don’t have the time or patience to work on that. Getting this site’s shit together was hard enough.

I also have a Tumblr. I could use my main or set up a sideblog, but frankly, I think Tumblr is shit for actually posting things that aren’t stolen pictures or inspirational quotes.

Honestly, I like WordPress’ posting interface best, but I also didn’t want frivolous journal posting on my main site. That’s where the completed work goes. So what I needed ideally was another WordPress, except I didn’t want to install an entire other installation on my webserver.

Here is how I accomplished that.

Step 1: Create a category for your journal. You can also create child categories if you want, although on my own site, this would make the list a million miles longer.

Step 2: Download and install the Ultimate Category Excluder plugin. It will probably say that it’s untested with your current version of WordPress, but it works fine with mine.

Step 3: Once it’s installed, go to Settings > Category Exclusion. From there, find the category you set up for your journal and check the first box next to it. This will exclude those posts from your main page. You can also check the other boxes too if you want, but for my purposes, I prefer to have them included in feeds, archives, and search. Repeat for any child categories you made.

Step 4: You may want to go the extra mile and put a link to your journal category in your menu so that people can actually find it.

And that’s it. A more or less separate “sideblog” on your existing WordPress installation.